Born in the Mother Wound
How the High Priestess archetype met me to offer a salve and understanding of my deepest wound
I didn’t grow up with a mother. There was a revolving door of nanny’s and eventually a stepmother, until there wasn’t. The truth is none of them were up to the task, they were either too young or unable to provide something they didn’t have themselves- often both.
When I pulled my very first oracle card 4 years ago, I cried as the words ‘Queen of the Divine Feminine’ stared back at me. It was a cry interwoven with grief and an unusual sensation of relief. Like there was more to me than this void I felt, like I was being shown a glimpse of something buried within that had been lost.
There was this profound sense of irony that the motherless girl could embody the ‘Queen of the Divine Feminine.’ The only aspect of myself I knew was rooted in being strong, surviving, a sense of control. I’ve had to learn to find ‘mother’ in non-traditional ways. For a long time it was through failed experiments in relationships and belonging. Those failures led to more experimenting, leading me to an unexpected remembering of a forgotten truth, to where She lived in me.
The archetype of the High Priestess is not one that I embraced with ease. It just kept showing up, knocking on my door, waiting patiently for me to invite it in (which took years - slowly building trust, remembering my wholeness, and communing with the divine).
The High Priestess is strong in the places that matter - her boundaries, integrity, and sense of power. This strength makes it possible for her to be soft, to have compassion, to hear her inner wisdom, to flow with grace and surrender with faith.
My relationship to the High Priestess was born in the darkness of my wound. She tells me that what I didn’t receive externally was the way to discovering what medicine lived in me. A torch in the shadows. The thing that came to blossom and flourish, the thing that would call to others, the thing that is desperately lacking in our overtly toxic masculine world.
When I speak from her voice it’s a rally cry to those who recognize this flavor of grief in their own way. When I summon the High Priestesses, when I nudge and lure with the potency of her title, it’s the ‘Queen of the Divine Feminine’ card. Perhaps you don’t understand, yet there’s some unnameable knowing. If you’re curious, if you resonate, if there’s a spark, we’re calling you.
*’Queen of the Divine Feminine’ from I AM A QUEEN oracle cards